FO371-46251 — Page 28

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Hong Kong.

Note by the Colonial Office.

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1. Hong Kong at the time of its cession to Great Britain

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by the Treaty of Nanking a hundred years ago, was a

desolate island with no inhabitants except a few groups of

fishermen. It has grown under the direction of the British

Government to be one of the great sea ports of the world

based upon British law and order and on the enterprise of all

peoples and nations alike.

2.

The British policy has been and will continue to be that

* Hong Kong should be a free port for the services of all trade

and commerce in the Far East. Hong Kong is the depot for

an incessant flow of people and goods in and out of China.

Of the population of nearly a million residents which it had

attained, all had freely, come in of their own choice or were

the children of immigrants who had done so. If any prefer

to live under Chinese rule there is no let or hindrance to

their moving over the border for the purpose.

3. It was a centre of settled and orderly conditions for

the benefit of all countries having relations with China

throughout the prolonged era of revolutionary disturbance in

South China.

4. When the Japanese overran Shanghai and South China the

Colony was for 3 years up to December 1941 able to serve as

a channel of supplies to China and a refuge for hundreds of

thousands of displaced and largely destitute Chinese people,

and for numbers of foreign nationals in China.

5.

Immediately after the war the conditions of law and order

and the well-developed mercantile services which Hong-Kong

will provide for all alike will make a very special contri-

bution to the development of settled conditions in the Far

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East/

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